Scarves
by teawithmilk
Summary: [2012-verse, Apritello, shameless fluff] Donatello, April and a New England fall.


turtles are not mine.

tiny mentions of raph/casey, past capril. deal.

* * *

**-scarves-**

* * *

On the other side of the farm, a window broke.

"It worries me - _ACTUALLY WORRIES ME_ - that out of the four of us, Raph was the first to date a human."

Something else broke in the distance, and April gave an affectionately frustrated sigh. "I'm not sure Casey qualifies as fully-human. He can definitely take a beating."

Donatello pulled a face. "Yeah, twice every night," he grumbled. April choked. She had taken the quietest bedroom on the other side of the staircase, next to a bathroom and a closet; Leo and Mikey had taken the rooms on the other side, and Don, Raph and Casey had taken the three rooms in the attic.

Except it was painfully apparent by the look on Donatello's face that one of those rooms wasn't exactly being occupied.

She cleared her throat. "So, what are they even playing, anyway?"

"Last I checked," Donatello muttered, voice dripping in distaste. "ninja hockey. Like ninja tag," he clarified, "except to tag someone-"

"-you gotta hit 'em with the puck."

"Or the stick. Or, y'know. In general."

April gave a small, amused huff and shuffled closer to him as they kicked through the leaves. Donatello shifted, uncomfortable in the oversized parka he'd been bundled in once Casey had dug out the Jones family's winter clothes out from under the stairs.

They'd all worn clothes before, mostly in the dark of New York winters with a foot of snow above, all piling into the dojo with their mattresses and blankets, playing janken to see which poor sucker had to make the trek to the kitchen to refill the hot water bottles (oddly enough, it was never, ever, **ever **Mikey). But they were usually thrift-store t-shirts and oversized track-pants, loose and baggy over their shells, and this thing was practically brand-new, and clung over his carapace like some kind of new skin. The fake fur of the hood itched his chin, and his shoulder felt weird without the familiar leather strap, and the weight of his bo.

Fifteen years underground had meant that none of the boys had ever seen a real New England fall before, and Casey had just gotten his license and the _brilliant_ idea of taking a road-trip up north to his family's beaten old farm while his grandparents went to Florida for the fall break. The trees were, truthfully, breathtaking, and Donatello got a kick out of s'mores around a campfire just as much as anybody else, but it was cold, and muddy, and he'd been perfectly comfortable sitting in front of the log fire with a giant mug of hot apple cider and his laptop - he'd had quite enough of scraping dead leaves out from between his toes, thank you.

...but then April had come in and asked if he wanted to go for a walk and she'd barely finished speaking before he'd yelped "_yes_!" and practically thrown himself at the door.

"You're not cold, are you?" she asked, kicking through another slush of leaves with her warm-looking, boot-covered feet, and he obstinantly shook his head.

"Naaaaaah," dear god he thought he could feel something crawling into his wraps. "I'm from New York, remember. This is easy."

He was a _terrible liar_.

As they circled around the barn, they fell into a comfortable silence, the type they used to way back when they'd holed up in his lab for hours on end reading Kraang codes and making theories or watching Cosmos, and he worried: even though it had been almost a year, was she just hanging out with him because Casey was with Raph now?

But that wasn't her style.

And _he_ wasn't April's style, was he? Not like that, at least.

He huffed, and April rolled her eyes. "I _knew_ you were cold. C'mere." She pulled her scarf off - a bright blue thing that had come with her from New York, and reached up to try and put it on him.

"No, really, I'm fine, I was just-" he floundered for an excuse even as she looped the scarf around his neck and pulled him closer. "-this jacket's kinda dusty, y'know?" They'd stopped underneath a big old tree, the dying leaves tinting orange as the sun sank. Aside from the yelling in the distance, everything was quiet. "It's weird not being in the city," Donatello ventured softly.

"Mm-hm." She was almost leaning against him, warm and familiar.

"Lots of nature out here."

"You hate it, right?"

"No, of course not! There's wifi here," he added, and April snorted, rolling her eyes and yanking the scarf back.

"You're such an addict."

"I prefer the term 'dependency'."

"I prefer the fact that you're a _dork_."

"Pssssht," he shot back, "that's my most charming feature."

"Hm," April said in reply, and _that_ shut him up, his big brown eyes wide with a lack of a comeback - it was good, sometimes, to put Donatello in his sassless place. He shifted awkwardly and looked away, and April turned her attentions back to fixing her scarf, growling softly in her throat when the scarf bunched around her hair.

"Oh, here, let me."

He took the scarf and wound it more securely around her, lifting her ponytail out of the way and he tried not to be surprised that she'd _let_ him. How many times had he had some kind of Disney knock-off daydream about fixing her hair, helping her into her jacket, wiping some soot off of her nose?

He needed to say something, he thought. Something meaningful, something to keep the moment alive.

"Y'know, this thing doesn't suit you at all."

April's eyes widened, her mouth dropping into a little 'o' of shock. His gut dropped in panic. "I mean!" he stammered, panicking, and spread his hands out, half in explanation, half in defence. "W-well, turquoise or teal - any bright colour, really - suits people with- well, I mean, according to standard colour theory- and cosmetic theories on skin-tones, someone with red hair and is as pale as you are should wear - and I'm not telling you what to wear! - colours like, hah, like green, or earthy colours, or-"

April's warm hands slid around one of his. She was smiling, now, fond and lopsided.

"Or purple?"

He looked down at her tiny hands, dwarfed against his own, and his heart stilled in his throat, caught in hope and trepidation and _no way she can't can she?_

His voice shook. "April...?"

* * *

-fin-


End file.
